The conventional art describes various methods and systems for assisting a driver of a vehicle. One example of such a system is described in US 2003/0060936 A1, published Mar. 27, 2003. This system comprises a data acquisition system acquiring data including information on status of a vehicle and information on environment in a field around the vehicle, a controller, and at least one actuator. The controller determines a future environment in the field around the vehicle using the acquired data, for making an operator response plan in response to the determined future environment, which plan prompts the operator to operate the vehicle in a desired manner for the determined future environment. The actuator is coupled to a driver controlled input device to mechanically affect operation of the input device in a manner that prompts, via a haptic input from the driver controlled input device, the driver to operate the vehicle in the desired manner.
Another example of such a system is described in JP05-024519. This system assists a driver of a vehicle by automatically applying wheel brakes if there is a high chance that a vehicle may come into contact with the preceding obstacle in front of the vehicle. The automatically applied wheel brakes are quickly released upon determination of a driver's lane change intention.
One concern raised by this system is that the quick release of the automatically applied wheel brakes may provide an input not totally acceptable to the driver.
A need remains for an improved method and system for transmitting a detected in-path target obstacle to a driver of a vehicle without providing any unacceptable input to the driver.